Talk:Tiffany
To a Fandom User: Please create an account to edit the Wiki. She-male is the term used within the story. So it is the term used in the Wiki. @BabyValentine,' and the anonymous editor in question: This is part of two comments I made in the series forum[http://whateleyacademy.net/index.php/forum/the-quad/82-wiki-wiki-wiki?start=370#28274 ' '(here]and here) which might be relevant: ---- I am fairly certain that A Fandom User (which is the name automatically assigned to any anonymous contributor on Wikia) has no real familiarity with the series, and I suspect that if they did, they would be here complaining about how offensive the premise of the series is to them, instead. I may be wrong about this, so I wouldn't want to assume so, however. '' ''My suspicion is that they were doing a general search on the term 'transgender' on Wikia (or even just through a general search engine) for reasons unrelated to the series or the terminology, and on finding what they considered an incorrect usage, tried to politely correct it, and then, deciding to see where else this 'mistake' was made, stumbled across terms they found deeply hurtful - without knowing or caring about the context - and immediately took offense without looking any further. I don't want to sound either defensive about the series, or dismissive of their hurt feelings, but I do think that this sort of thing does indicate a rush to judgment on their part. Whether they would see it less harshly if they knew the series, or more, I cannot say. --- TBH, I always found the use of the term 'she-male' in the early Ayla stories a bit distasteful. But I also saw that it was a quirk of the character (and maybe the author, though I don't know much about ScramblerJ and I got the sense that Diane was just following what Scrambler had used in the intro story) primarily. My impression was that 'she-male' was how Gracie saw herself, and that Ayla only picked it up at first because he was unfamiliar with how offensive it was, and so unhappy with his own condition that he would have used it even if he were - as soon as he understood the term 'intersexed' he started using that, if only because he's the sort to favor more formal and sesquipedalian speech. I don't remember anyone '''other than Gracie, Ayla, and Gracie's doctor (!) using the term 'she-male', in fact, including Janet, Amy, or Tiffany, but I could be wrong. I was not aware of the differing opinions on the validity of 'transgender' versus 'transgendered', and if anything, everything I'd ever heard had always said the opposite - that 'transgender' implies that it is a thing one is, an identity rather than a description (which is a big no-no in some circles), while 'transgendered' would be the preferred term because is it passive and descriptive. There seems to have been some change in views on this, and possibly some difference in views among different groups - and to be honest, I have never exactly been one to carefully observe the forefront of mainstream LGBTI thought, even when I was living in Berkeley and taking a more active role in the community. First Speaker Schol-R-LEA;2 of the Last Eristic Church of Finagle and Holy Bisexuality (talk) 01:36, January 17, 2017 (UTC) From looking through the story, the term "she-male" is used to define a person that is going to stay with a female form and a penis. This differs from the "pre-op" transexual, who plans on having surgery to become female. Along with Ayla, Gracie, and Dr. Parsons, Amy and reportedly Dr. Hammond used it. It was also reportedly used by the Goodkind family. Baby Valentine (talk) 02:11, January 17, 2017 (UTC)Baby Valentine '''@BabyValentine: The problem is, even in the series it's an offensive term to most trans* people. Grace uses it, for whatever in-character reasons of her own, and Trevor/Ayla used it because he didn't know the formal terms and. given his state of mind initially, probably would have chosen the slur anyway; but that's all about the in-character explanations, which don't explain why the ''author wrote it that way.'' I suspect the real answer lies in the fact that ScramblerJ - who vanished from the group shortly after writing their part of the intro - though it '''was the correct term, and no one in the Canon Cabal seems to have corrected that or objected to it. Why this would be the case I can't say, but... well, AFAICT, while several of the original cabal (most notably Bek) had been writing sex/gender transformation fiction for years at that point, I don't think any of them knew any real-life transfolk very well. They were in the same boat as ScramblerJ. '' I don't know how Diane is about this, but she's savvy enough that I am guessing she '''did' know it was a slur, but as with many other aspects of Ayla's back story, she had been backed into a corner with the existing intro dialogue, so she wrote it in a way as to explain why an otherwise intelligent person was talking this way. A lot of Ayla's original persona got retconned by Diane as otherwise out-of-character reactions to his recent experiences (or, as in the case of people using female pronouns for a female-appearing but male-identifying character - the perceptions of others rather than Ayla's own internal viewpoint), and I have always chalked this up to the same thing.'' '''To the anonymous editor: '''As I said, most of the writers in this group aren't trans* themselves (''Dr. Bender is the exception to that, but she only transitioned recently, many years later), and AFAIK none were identifying as such at the time the series began. I am guessing the original members either didn't know it was a slur, or didn't want to step on the other writers' toes by calling them on it. ''For myself, my gender is "dunno". While I do present as kinda sorta male in public, that's 10% cowardice and 90% inertia; as for my preferred presentation, you're reading it - if it were feasible, I would avoid all face-to-face contact with other ''H. sap''s entirely. First Speaker Schol-R-LEA;2 of the Last Eristic Church of Finagle and Holy Bisexuality (talk) 05:21, January 17, 2017 (UTC) ---- I should add that a moderator in the forum also made an important point in this regard: that in 2004, when the series was started, there ''were no terms for transfolk in general use which aren't considered slurs today. She also mentions that while most of the writers have not come out publicly about their self-identification doesn't mean they aren't gender-variant; for several of them, it is because they cannot afford to be out to anyone under their real names, even in the current social climate.''First Speaker Schol-R-LEA;2 of the Last Eristic Church of Finagle and Holy Bisexuality (talk) 17:01, January 17, 2017 (UTC)